University of Manchester - University of Toronto: MUI double success!

30 January 2019

Kevin Ward and Ian Mell have both been awarded funding from the new UoM-UofT joint research fund.

The University of Manchester and the University of Toronto are contributing matching funds to support collaborative research initiatives through a joint call for proposals. Following the first call, Kevin Ward and Ian Mell are among the successful applicants.

Ian Mell and Tenley Conway (Toronto)'s project 'Co-producing sustainable cities through Green Infrastructure best practice’ will use the funding to facilitiate reflections in both locations, and at a number of scales, and provide opportunities for research exchange and teaching between staff, students and local practitioners. The outcomes of this exchange will include opportunities to engage with innovative thinking about urban greening from international experts and how we can apply this knowledge in rapidly changing urban environments.

Students, research staff and local environmental practitioners and policy-makers will engage in a conversation focusing on how investment in green infrastructure is being delivered in the UK and Canada. Drawing on extensive experience at the research/practice interface Ian and Tenley will use workshops in both Toronto and Manchester, teaching sessions with UG and PGT sessions, and research seminars to test new ideas about the socio-cultural equity of green space and how local government are applying the developing knowledge of urban ecology in local and strategic planning to ask whether 'urban greening’ could be the most appropriate way of ensuring our cities remain liveable, functional and attractive.

Kevin Ward and Theresa Enright (Toronto)'s project 'Governing urban infrastructures' will look at how infrastructure is governed and how it supports sustainable spatial development has preoccupied those working at the interface of infrastructure and urban studies. The use of infrastructure to project cities into the world economy and to position them to capture global capital flows has accompanied a number of experiments in territorial governance. At the same time, city-regions have sought out new multi-scalar infrastructure arrangements to provide the necessary welfare support and services for their citizens. Often, the contest between these economic, environmental and social aims causes conflicts between different urban stakeholders. Infrastructure is thus increasingly at the centre of debates over the making of urban futures.

The project will establish an institutional vehicle for work on urban infrastructure among academics/faculty, graduate students, and practitioners and policymakers. Activities will include a visit to Manchester in September by Theresa Enright and two researchers from Toronto, participating in a seminar event on 'Infrastructural futures across cities of the global north' as art of the Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series award for 2019 and 2020 held by Enright and Ward (together with colleagues at UMAA-Boston, University of Pittsburgh and the University of Sheffield)

How infrastructure is governed and how it supports sustainable spatial development has preoccupied those working at the interface of infrastructure and urban studies. The use of infrastructure to project cities into the world economy and to position them to capture global capital flows has accompanied a number of experiments in territorial governance. At the same time, city-regions have sought out new multi-scalar infrastructure arrangements to provide the necessary welfare support and services for their citizens. Often, the contest between these economic, environmental and social aims causes conflicts between different urban stakeholders. Infrastructure is thus increasingly at the centre of debates over the making of urban futures.